Story Photos
 Photo Roger Werth University of Washington landscape architecture graduate student Michael Espenan, left, describes his spiral pathway to U.S. Fish and Wildlife designer John Ivie, one of the judges in a competition to create a unique interpretive trail near Willapa Bay. |
UW art students show off designs for interpretive trail
Tuesday, March 18, 2003 8:29 AM PST
By Eric Apalategui
Printable version
E-mail this articleWILLAPA BAY -- The rough-skinned newts in Headquarters Creek cluster by the hundreds to mate.
"They get in the water and they basically roll around together until they get the job done," said University of Washington student Levi Stoll, who saw art in the amphibian orgy.
Stoll hopes his "Hydrostatic Newt Ball" granite sculpture will be among the artistic marvels that draw people to explore Headquarters Creek.
The small creek, at the southern shore of Willapa Bay, once was considered a nuisance to be tamed with tidal gates. By this fall, a short interpretive trail will tell the stories of newt balls and other natural wonders -- but with student artworks rather that sterile placards that mark traditional trails.
Stoll and 20 other UW students on Monday unveiled their inspirations for what will be the first trail of its kind in the vast National Wildlife Refuge system, which marks its 100th anniversary this year.
"We didn't want words. We wanted artwork that would make (visitors) think," said Charlie Stenvall, manager of the Willapa National Wildlife refuge who is helping to judge the artwork. "We told (students) to be as bold and as wild as they wanted to be. We can always retreat from that."
The creek gurgles out of the sylvan splendor of Southwest Washington's rain forest next to the refuge headquarters along U.S. 101. Here endangered marbled murrelets nest in tree tops, rare salamanders and newts dwell on fecund forest floors and chum salmon once again surge upstream to spawn.
Earlier restoration work on the creek -- including removal of fish-blocking gates and planting of salmon fry -- paid off in 2001 as a dozen adult chum salmon returned to spawn. Last fall, 300 more chum salmon chugged upstream.
The trail will traverse 2,000 feet along and above the creek, for most people an easy stroll from tidewater to forest. Stenvall has $20,000 to spend this year and is seeking state money to build a bridge later.
"It's a unique link between art and biology," professor John Young said. He chairs UW's Public Art Program, which teams students in art, architecture and landscape architecture to design projects that often get built.
From the bay, where Sarah Corrado planned an aluminum sculpture that marks the changing tides, to the forest, where Johnny Hartsfield envisioned a wooden overlook in the evergreen canopy, the students' proposals ranged from the practical to the whimsical.
Some, such as Michael Espenan's oyster-shell path into a mud-walled spiral and Erik Stromberg's alder tree suspended in air, are designed to change with weather and time.
Looking for more permanence, Stoll designed his 2,500-pound "newt ball" to sit in a bowl of rushing water, cushioned so lightly that a child could spin amphibians sandblasted across the sphere.
"Hopefully it would be here for the 200th anniversary," Stoll said. "Hopefully the newts will be here, too."
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